Chicago businessman charged over Mumbai attacks

CHICAGO — A Chicago businessman was charged with helping an old friend from military school in Pakistan plot the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, officials said.

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 49, has been held in jail since his October arrest on charges of helping plot an attack on the Danish newspaper that published incendiary cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005.

Prosecutors allege that Rana helped his friend David Coleman Headley, a key suspect in the Mumbai attacks, by allowing him to use his immigration company as a cover for surveillance trips to India and Denmark.

Rana was charged Thursday with three separate counts of providing material support for terrorism in the Mumbai attacks, the Denmark terror plot, and to the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Also indicted on conspiracy charges related to the Denmark plot were Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged terror kingpin in Pakistan who prosecutors accuse of being in regular contact with Al-Qaeda leaders, and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major in the Pakistani military. Neither man is in US custody.

Headley, 49, has pleaded not guilty to 12 terrorism related charges and remains in custody where he is cooperating with prosecutors.

The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and American mother, Headley reportedly befriended Bollywood stars and even dated an actress during his lengthy surveillance trips to Mumbai.

The indictment alleges that Rana acted as a messenger while Headley scoped out the Mumbai terror targets, taking photos and video and entering their positions on a GPS device.

Nearly a year after the bloody 60-hour siege which began November 26, 2008, Headley was allegedly recorded discussing five future targets with Rana.

Prosecutors said the targets included Bollywood, the Indian temple Somnath, the National Defense College in Delhi, Shiv Sena, a political party in India with roots in Hindu nationalism and the Danish newspaper.

Headley had already begun the planning for a second Indian attack during a March 2009 surveillance trip whose targets included the National Defense College and Chabad Houses in "several cities" in India, the indictment alleges.

He was also working on the Danish newspaper plot weeks before the Mumbai attack was carried out, the indictment alleges.

Headley is accused of once again using Rana's immigration business as a cover in order to arrange a visit to the Copenhagen and Aarhus offices of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's highest circulating daily.

During a February meeting in Pakistan, Kashmiri allegedly told Headley that they should use a truck bomb to attack the newspaper and directed him to meet with European contacts who could provide the money, weapons and manpower for the attack.

Headley and Rana were arrested in October on terror charges related to the plot to attack Jyllands-Posten and kill an editor and the cartoonist.

Headley was charged last month with spending two years casing Mumbai, even taking boat tours around the city's harbor to scope out landing sites for the attackers.

Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian citizen who owns the Chicago-based First World Immigration Services that Headley allegedly used as a cover, insists that he is a pacifist who was "duped" by his friend.

A date has not yet been set for Rana's arraignment on the new charges.

No beefed-up security for Shania Twain's New Year's Day torch run: officials

TIMMINS, Ont. — Olympic officials say they won't be boosting security when Canadian country music superstar Shania Twain carries the torch Friday in her hometown of Timmins, Ont.

Twain's run with the flame will come four days after a torchbearer in Guelph, Ont., fell to the ground in a confrontation between protesters and security personnel.

"The security levels we have now are appropriate. There's no pre-plans to beef up security, but that might change on a moment's notice, based on crowd size or crowd behaviour," said Bert Paquet, spokesman for the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit.

"We have that ability to increase that level pretty much instantly."

Torchbearer Courtney Hansen had just turned a corner with the torch in Guelph on Monday morning when she became entangled in the protest and fell.

The flame skidded against the ground but stayed lit. Guelph police have charged a 19-year-old woman with assault.

It's expected that Twain, a multiple Grammy-winner whose 1997 release "Come on Over" remains the best-selling country music album of all time, will carry the torch during a two-hour celebration in Timmins on New Year's Day.

There have been no reports in Timmins media of any expected protests.

Paquet said security officials "don't want to take away" the uniqueness of the torch run - both for Twain's fans and the singer herself - by having undue levels of security.

The security unit is working closely with local police, Paquet said, and if any "intelligence" shows there could be a problem then they'll act quickly.

"Our job is to protect the torchbearer and the flame. And we will do that."

Lebanon PM on 1st Syria visit since father's death

DAMASCUS, Syria — Lebanon's prime minister, who has blamed neighboring Syria for the assassination of his father, visited Damascus Saturday for the first time since the 2005 killing — a trip that a close associate said was extremely difficult for him to make.

Despite the unresolved issue of his father's slaying in a massive truck bombing in Beirut, Lebanese Premier Saad Hariri's visit potentially opens the way for a new era in the two countries' relations, which have been characterized by upheaval and suspicion for decades.

The 39-year-old Hariri has appealed for relations with Syria based on "clarity and honesty." He was greeted warmly by Syrian President Bashar Assad upon his arrival at the presidential palace at the start of his two-day visit, and Lebanese media said he would attend a dinner banquet hosted by Assad.

Assad adviser Buthaina Shaaban told reporters their talks were "frank" and "succeeded in overcoming difficulties that marred relations in the past five years."

"The guarantee to that is the will of both President Assad and Hariri to build a positive and constructive relationship," she said.

Hariri said in a statement his government was looking forward to establishing "real and strategic relations with Syria."

Syria directly dominated Lebanon for nearly 30 years and kept tens of thousands of troops on its soil. After the killing of Hariri's father, Rafik, Syria came under intense pressure from its opponents in Lebanon, who staged massive protests, and from the West, forcing it to withdraw its troops from Lebanon.

Syria repeatedly denied involvement in the assassination and a series of other political slayings and bombings that followed, but Hariri and his supporters continued to implicate Syria in the killing. Anti-Syrian parties were swept to power in 2005 elections in Lebanon.

The visit by Hariri was "very difficult on the personal level" and involves "great sacrifice," said Hariri loyalist and former lawmaker Mustafa Alloush.

"But as prime minister of Lebanon, it is quite normal to have such a visit. ... It is necessary and there is a need to settle all aspects of the relationship," Alloush told The Associated Press.

He said the visit did not mean some in Lebanon had dropped their belief that Syria was responsible for the killing of Rafik Hariri, who also served as prime minister.

"But this matter is up to the international tribunal now; it is no longer a personal issue," Alloush said.

A U.N.-backed tribunal has been set up to prosecute the assassins, but no suspects have been charged.

Syria has sought recently to improve its relations with the West, largely through its actions in Lebanon. Assad backed a peace deal between rival political factions in Lebanon that ended sectarian violence in May 2008.

Last year, Syria established formal diplomatic relations with Lebanon and set up an embassy in Lebanon for the first time since the countries' independence from France in the 1940s.

Syria still maintains influence in Lebanon through its backing of the militant group Hezbollah.

Hariri and his pro-Western political allies are in an uneasy power-sharing government with a Hezbollah-led grouping.

Associated Press Writer Zeina Karam contributed to this report from Beirut.

The push for 350: Contradictions and carbon levels

OPENHAGEN — As police cracked down on climate protesters, church bells tolled 350 times Sunday to impress on the U.N. global warming conference a number that is gaining a following, but is also awash in contradictions.

Conference negotiators went behind closed doors in talks to pin down an elusive new pact on climate, talks in which the figure 350 looms as a goal for true believers, but one that appears impossible based on progress so far.

It refers to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the highest concentration that some leading scientists say the world can handle without sparking dangerous climate effects.

"It's the most important number in the world," said Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental activist group 350.org. "It's the line between habitability on this planet and a really, really desolate future."

Not everyone buys into that. But an entire environmental group has sprung up around the number, pushing 350 as a goal, sporting it on T-shirts and flags waved by throngs of protesters that marched to the conference center over the weekend. About 100 nations at the U.N. climate summit have signed on to the idea of heading for 350.

Actually, the world has lived with more than 350 for a while.

The last time the Earth had 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the air was a generation ago, in the fall of 1989. This year CO2 pushed over the 390 level. When scientists started measuring carbon dioxide in 1958 it was 315.

Since the atmosphere passed the 350 level, ice sheets have been melting and other dramatic changes have been happening. Prominent scientists — notably NASA's James Hansen, one of the earliest to warn about global warming, and Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — have said 350 is the only safe level of carbon dioxide in the air.

Still, many economists, political leaders, and even some scientists believe that the worst effects of global warming can be avoided even with less stringent actions.

But there is general agreement among negotiators and climate scientists that continued global warming will lead to dramatic changes that mean more widespread drought in some regions, greater flooding along coastlines, stronger storms and the loss of species.

On Sunday, hundreds of churches around the world had signed up to ring bells at 3:50 p.m. in their respective time zones.

"It was an incredibly powerful moment and to know that there are bells ringing all over Europe, up to Greenland, down into the south Pacific and every corner of the planet," McKibben said moments after the bells stopped ringing in Copenhagen.

As they tolled, more than 40 government environment chiefs and other high-level negotiators were meeting at the Danish Foreign Ministry. They were trying to bridge the gap between their positions in informal talks before the second and last week of negotiations gets under way. The week will end with the arrival of President Barack Obama and more than 100 other national leaders for the final hours of negotiation.

Sharp divisions remain between rich and poor countries on greenhouse emissions cuts and financing for developing nations to deal with climate change and shift to cleaner energy.

"I think there was recognition around the table of the urgency of what we need to achieve in the coming days," Britain's Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said after Sunday's talks. "I think there needs to be more movement from everyone, more imagination, and I think we will all be striving for that."

Australia's Climate Change Minister Penny Wong also said a lot of work remains to be done.

"It's going to be tough to get an agreement by Friday but that's what we have to do," she told a news conference.

According to participants, the closed-door consultations focused on about a half-dozen plans on financing for poor countries to deal with climate change. One joint proposal by Mexico and Norway calls for a "Green Fund" for climate financing, starting with $10 billion a year in 2013, and increasing to $30 billion to $40 billion a year by 2020

Separately, a proposal aimed at saving the world's tropical forests suffered a setback Sunday, when negotiators ditched plans for faster action on the problem because of concerns that rich countries aren't willing to finance the plan. A deal on deforestation — a sizable global warming factor — is considered a key component of the larger pact.

For a second day in a row, police cracked down on climate activists marching through the Danish capital. More than 200 were detained as police stopped an unauthorized demonstration headed toward the city's harbor and carried out a security check of some of the participants.

Meanwhile, nearly all of the 1,000 detained on Saturday — from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the U.S — were released without charges. Thirteen of them were arraigned in court and faced preliminary charges of assaulting police or were let off with a warning for wearing masks, which are outlawed during demonstrations in Denmark, or carrying box-cutters or other sharp objects.

Reducing carbon dioxide levels to 350 would mean reversing the trend of the past couple of centuries. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for as long as 100 years. And the emissions cuts currently being pledged by developed countries, including the United States and European nations, are aimed at having CO2 levels peak at around 450, not 350, in coming decades.

And even that may not be possible. Some economists say the world should plan to stop at 550.

Economist Henry Jacoby, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, has said that even 450 is "totally impossible, there's no way we can do that."

To get down to 350, civilization has to remove massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the skies, something talked about but not yet achieved. Trees and oceans suck CO2 from the atmosphere, but that process is overwhelmed by emissions from burning coal and oil. McKibben said it would probably take 40 years to get down to 350 even if emissions stopped today.

"It may be on the edge of impossible," he said Sunday. "We could do it. At the moment, there's no sign that we are going to do it."

MIT management professor John Sterman said scientifically 350 makes sense, even if economically it seem unreachable.

"We ought to have a goal of 350 and realize we're already above that," Sterman said.

___

Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen, John Heilprin and Karl Ritter contributed to this report.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ Find behind-the-scenes information, blog posts and discussion about the Copenhagen climate conference at http://www.facebook.com/theclimatepool, a Facebook page run by AP and an array of international news agencies. Follow coverage and blogging of the event on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/AP_ClimatePool

Clashes in Philippine martial law province: govt

MANILA, Philippines — Rebel forces loyal to a powerful Muslim clan whose area is under martial law in the southern Philippines have engaged troops in clashes, a senior government official said Monday.

"There have been shooting incidents between these groups and the Philippine National Police," Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno told reporters.

"They have engaged in actual firefights with some of the uniformed services," he said.

EU: Hijacked oil tanker was outside corridor

NAIROBI, Kenya — An oil tanker bound for the United States that was hijacked by Somali pirates was traveling outside a recommended maritime corridor, the commander of the EU Naval Force said Tuesday.

The Greek-flagged tanker Maran Centaurus was carrying more than $20 million of crude oil when pirates captured it Sunday.

Rear Adm. Peter Hudson said Tuesday he does not advise vessels to have armed guards on board, and that flammable cargo and firearms don't mix.

Hudson also said the fact that pirates are now attacking ships 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the Somali coast presents a large challenge and that the EU force will never fully secure such a large area of ocean.

Twenty percent of global shipping — including 8 percent of global oil shipments — is funneled into the narrow, pirate-infested Gulf of Aden that leads through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. The route is bordered on one side by the failed state of Somalia and on the other by the increasingly unstable country of Yemen.

Somalia's lawless 1,880-mile coastline has become a pirate haven. The impoverished Horn of Africa nation has not had a functioning government for a generation and the weak U.N.-backed administration is too busy fighting an Islamist insurgency to go after pirates. Pirates now hold about a dozen vessels hostage and more than 200 crew members.

The Maran Centaurus is carrying around 275,000 metric tons of crude, said Stavros Hadzigrigoris, from the ship's owners Maran Tankers Management. At current market rates the oil would be worth just over $20 million.

The ship has 9 Greeks, 16 Filipinos, 2 Ukrainians, and a Romanian aboard. Granberg said the ship's owner reported the crew was not injured in the attack.

The vessel is only the second oil tanker captured by Somali pirates. The Saudi-owned Sirius Star was hijacked a year ago, leading to heightened international efforts to fight piracy off the Horn of Africa. That hijacking ended with a $3 million ransom payment. The ship held 2 million barrels of oil valued at about $100 million and was released last January.

Icebergs heading for New Zealand

A flotilla of hundreds of icebergs that split off Antarctic ice shelves is drifting toward New Zealand and could endanger ships in the south Pacific Ocean, experts said.

The nearest one, about 30 metres high, was 160 miles south east of New Zealand's Stewart Island, Australian glaciologist Neal Young said.

He could not say how many icebergs in total were roaming the Pacific, but counted 130 in one satellite image alone and 100 in another.

Large numbers of icebergs last floated close to New Zealand in 2006, when some were visible from the coastline - the first such sighting since 1931.

Maritime chiefs have issued navigation warnings for the area south of the country. "It's an alert to shipping to be aware these potential hazards are around and to be on the lookout for them," Maritime New Zealand spokeswoman Sophie Hazelhurst said.

No major shipping lanes or substantial fishing grounds are in the area, but most ships there have little hull protection if they collide with an iceberg - which typically has 90% of its mass under water. Very few adventure sailors would be in the waters in November, when it is still the southern hemisphere's spring.

Maritime New Zealand safety services general manager Nigel Clifford said as the icebergs drift closer "the more the potential risks grow of them posing a hazard to shipping" as they break up and float lower in - or just under - the ocean surface.

The agency was "keeping a close eye on the increasing risk ... it's tracking iceberg positions and has begun initial planning for any incident", he said.

MTV nabs rights to Michael Jackson documentary

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The network that introduced millions to Michael Jackson will air his final performance. MTV Networks has acquired the exclusive U.S. television rights to the posthumous documentary "Michael Jackson's This Is It."

Though the film wasn't the blockbuster some anticipated, the concert movie did well at the box office and should prove of high interest to viewers of MTV, whose airing of Jackson's music videos helped boost the singer's career into the stratosphere during the 1980s.

Sister networks such as VH1, BET and Palladia also will have rights to air the film.

"This Is It" was shot from March to June and includes concert rehearsal and behind-the-scenes footage as Jackson prepared for his planned comeback stand in London.

Man in Santa Claus parade faces impaired driving charges

CAMBRIDGE, Ont. — A 51-year-old man faces impaired driving charges after he was pulled over while driving a vehicle in a Santa Claus parade in Cambridge, Ont. Saturday night.

At around 6:50 p.m. police at the parade received a tip about a driver in the parade who appeared drunk.

Police immediately pulled the vehicle off the road.

Two other occupants in the vehicle were charged with public intoxication.

Elisha Cuthbert, of '24' fame, to lead Grey Cup parade in Calgary

CALGARY — A Hollywood actress best known for her role as Jack Bauer's daughter in the hit television show "24" will lead the Grey Cup parade through the streets of Calgary Nov. 28.

Elisha Cuthbert, 26, will act as the parade marshal.

The actress is also well-known in the city as the girlfriend of Calgary Flames player Dion Phaneuf.

There are more than 60 floats and groups participating in the parade.

According to a website dedicated to the actress, she grew up in Montreal, but moved to Los Angeles at the age of 17 to pursue an acting career.

In her role as Bauer's daughter in "24", Cuthbert's character experienced multiple kidnappings and a mountain lion attack over the series' first two seasons.